


Clean

by sweetshotofkerosine



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hospital, Alternate Universe - Real World, Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Waverly Earp, Eventual Smut, Exposition, F/F, Heavy Angst, Hospitalization, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Injured Nicole Haught, Lesbian Nicole Haught, Mental Health Issues, Minor Wynonna Earp/Doc Holliday, Minor Xavier Dolls/Wynonna Earp, Muteness, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Power Bottom Waverly Earp, Pregnant Wynonna Earp, School Shootings, Slow Burn, Slow Burn Waverly Earp/Nicole Haught, Supportive Earp Siblings (Wynonna Earp), Survivor Guilt, Teen Pregnancy, Top Nicole Haught
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-07-27 22:37:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16228724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetshotofkerosine/pseuds/sweetshotofkerosine
Summary: The mental ward of the Purgatory hospital is usually empty. Here, no one asks for help. But three beds are filled, by three who don't need to ask for help. Wynonna Earp, the girl who gave birth at fifteen, and now lives off of painkillers and alcohol. Nicole Haught, the lone survivor of a grisly school shooting who screams with night terrors as she tears open her own flesh. And Waverly Earp, the girl who's gone mute from the abuse she's dealt with since her mother left her at the age of six.Also known as the AU where no one is okay. The one where it's the real world, but only the painful pieces of it. The one where three girls who've been broken beyond belief come together, and finally begin to heal.This covers a lot of triggering content, so trigger warnings for individual chapters are in the notes. If you ever need to talk, my Tumblr (@sapphicsucculent) is always open.





	1. Took me Down to the Water

**Author's Note:**

> Oh boy, this is a heavy chapter. Here's some backstory as to why are girls are here, and oof it hurts to read. Sorry I only write angst, I should have some fluffy one shots coming soon. In this, everyone is 4 years younger than they were on the show (except Willa). I'm so excited to write this, because I read somewhere that you get to know your characters the most when you break them. 
> 
> Trigger warnings for this are in the end notes

Wynonna Earp was 15. Henry Holliday was 24. When you're giving birth at 15, they have to give you the hard stuff. The addictive stuff.

 

When you're 15 and just gave up a baby girl for adoption, Oxy feels good. A little buzz, a little release, and it feels a little more normal. If she had a normal life, her parents would be looking out for her. Telling her when to stop, taking away the pill bottle before it became a lifeline. But Wynonna Earp doesn't see her family. She was 12 years old when her mother put a bullet in her own brain, blaming her three daughters. Family doesn't exactly give her that warm fuzzy feeling like it's supposed to. She'd been couch surfing for three years, sleeping over at friend's places until she no longer had any. Once she had no one left, she moved on to the men in town. She'd wait at the shady bar on the outskirts of town, going home to the trailer park with whoever would give her a bed for the night. They wanted more from her, so she drunkenly stripped and kissed her way through a long two years, keeping just enough dignity not to go any farther. Wynonna Earp was 14.

 

Sure, she still had a house. But it was her father's, and he never loved much other than whiskey, and the crack of his belt against skin. Her older sister was the lucky one. She was 18 when Mama killed herself, and left that night with her boyfriend Robert. Willa's far out of town now, 30 years old, and happily married to her high school sweetheart. Her baby sister Waverly was 6 at the time. Wynonna hasn't seen Waverly since. She ran off the day after, leaving Waverly behind. 

 

The men from the bar were cruel, and never seemed to leave. The bartender called them "revenants". He said it meant a person who returns. They returned every night, drinking 'til dawn, breath hot with bourbon. Their faces were always rough and scratchy against her cheek every night, and she relished the nights when she would see Levi. She would go home with Levi and Ambrose, and they would sit around the fire and talk. No sexual offers, no beer stained sheets. Just conversation with someone who treated her like an actual human being for once. But it was too good to be true. Levi was found dead in the forest a few months later, his boyfriend's body by his side. They say it was a hate crime, but an old woman in charge of the city council named Bunny pressured the police to drop the investigation. Wynonna Earp was 15.

 

Early October, a new man turned up at the bar. He said his name was John Henry. He was 24 years old, and refused to tell anyone where he had come from. He began to take a liking to Wynonna. They spent their nights at the counter, talking about nothing, and flirting until the sun rose the next day. He takes away the final shred of judgement Wynonna has, and they begin a romantic relationship. Now she spends her nights in his trailer, a bottle of banana liquor in hand. She's been on three types of birth control since she was 13, stolen from the town pharmacy. But the December of her 15th year rolls around, and a night in the woods with Henry goes against it.

 

9 years age difference. Wynonna should be a freshman in high school. But she stopped going once she left home, and no one seemed to care that the fuck-up daughter of the town drunk wasn't attending school. She lost her virginity in those woods, and it wasn't until March that she realized. When John Henry Holliday found out that he'd knocked up the little girl he'd been doing all winter, he fled town without a word. He left no trace, and he was never seen by a soul in Purgatory again.

 

Wynonna took up residency above another bar in town. Here, the revenants are few and far between, and the owner shows her some kindness. Shorty lets her stay in a little room above the bar, and she cleans tables after closing. She finally has a safe roof over her head, and strange men hit on her less now that she's swelled up like a balloon. 

 

August rolls around, and she has no time to make it to the hospital, so she gives birth on the pool table. It's for the best, she has little interest in keeping a presence on legal records. Baby Alice comes into her life wailing and kicking. It's a hard birth, the contractions feel like gunshots even with the cocktail of drugs. After all, she's still a child, nowhere near old enough to be a mother. The first time she holds her daughter, it's an odd feeling. This baby is the first family she's had in years, and she holds Alice Michelle Earp tight as long as she can. It's only temporary, she's unfit to raise a baby. A wet nurse comes to take the baby, and just like that, Wynonna has no family.

 

As soon as she's strong enough, Wynonna bids Shorty farewell. She takes all the painkillers she can find, and runs. To where, she doesn't know. She finds an old trailer on the wrong side of the tracks, and sleeps there until she's ready to show her face again. She takes up work at an establishment called Pussy Willows. She works as a stripper by the name of Aphrodite officially, but she's too scared to say no when they ask for more. She's seen nearly everything now, and the men all blend together as she prays for a painless night. Wynonna Earp was 16.

 

She uses the extra money to buy opioids and moonshine. She never stopped the painkillers from when she gave birth to Alice, and she needs more and more to get that soothing feeling. It goes on for years. She gets her drugs from Jim Byers, until he raises the price on her. Drunk and in withdrawal, Wynonna punches him in gut until he tells her where he keeps his supply. She takes every last pill.

 

A young cop named Xavier Dolls knocks on her door. Whiskey Jim turned her in for attacking him, and there's a warrant to bring her back to the station. She's scared, and lonely, ready to break at any moment. She cries on the floor of her holding cells, and Dolls comes to pity her. She tells him her story as she curls up in his arms, and it's the first gentle contact she's ever had. She kisses him, thinking that he's like every other man who wants to use her body for pleasure. She feels safe, and Xavier drops the charges against her. Wynonna Earp was 21

 

She and Xavier begin a romantic relationship. It's an unlikely pair, a drug addict and a cop. But he promises to get her clean, and he softens in her presence. She lets her hands wander, learning to trust him over the year they spend together. She asks him if he can help her find her daughter, and he offers to pull some strings and get her the files.

 

But it's all too good to be true. Xavier is shot in the heart while on patrol, and is buried on a hill overlooking the forest. Wynonna walks out the door of his house for the last time, and finds a Manila folder with the papers telling her where Alice is inside. She doesn't read his last gift to her, saving it for some unknown future. She falls back into old habits, but her supply of oxycotdin is nearly gone. She moves to harder stuff, praying for that feeling of cool water to wash over her again. The street heroin feels sharper at first, and leaves little pockmarked scars on her arms. She sleeps underneath a bridge, with nothing more than liquor to keep her warm.

 

It goes on, time passing without being counted. The drugs cloud her mind, and she runs out and can't find more. She hotwires an old car from the trailer park, and starts driving. Not knowing where she's going, she keeps driving until she reaches the edge of a lake. The car keeps going.

 

Wynonna Earp is 24.

* * *

 

 

Nicole Haught was 22. He had killed 20 with a gun that day. She escaped with little more than a graze from a bullet on her ribs.

 

She'd defied the odds by living more than once. The forest fire ate everything it touched, including her aunt and uncle. Nicole choked through the smoke, and found a canoe on a riverbank. Curled up in the ash and soot from her clothes, she drifted downstream. She was picked up by a police officer, and was told to forget about the fire that killed them. It would be easier to cope with, her parents said. Nicole Haught was 6.

 

Growing up in a small town out west, being gay wasn't something people spoke about. She sees a photo on the news of a man named Matthew Shepard. Her parents whisper words like 'disgusting' and 'sinner' at the TV. They tell her to leave the room, that this isn't news for children. She asks her teacher at school the next day. The teacher tells Nicole that Matthew Shepard was murdered because he was gay. She looks up the word in her papa's dictionary that night. The book says it means 'happy'. "Why was Mr. Shepard killed for being happy?" She asks her mother later that night. She is sent to her room, and told to never ask about these things again. Nicole Haught was 7.

 

She doesn't ask again. Not for years. She devours the new releases section of her local bookstore, fantasizing about the worlds that she reads. Her friends at school are starting to date, but she says she's focusing on her studies instead. Instead of studying, Nicole spends her weekends in the forest, only feeling at home in the mountain air. One day, she sees a group of kids playing hockey on the pond when it freezes over. When she asks her school's coach if she can join the team, he tells her hockey is a boy's sport.

 

Her parents don't particularly care for rules. They tell her as long as she honors god, she can do whatever she wants. They go to church every Sunday, and she tells them she's going to sit in the back with her friends. Her parents believe her. Instead she sits behind the church and bums cigarettes off the older boys. They joke that she's one of the them, with her backwards caps and flannel shirt, all fiery red hair and long limbs. She doesn't understand why, but she can't make herself enter that church door.

 

After church one day, she stops by the bookshop. Hidden under a pile of Spiderman comics is a single copy of a graphic novel called "Fun Home". The clerk gives a dirty look when she buys it without even reading the back, and she curls up under the covers with a flashlight to read. Everything becomes so clear, Alison is the first person she's seen who feels the way she does. She whispers the word 'lesbian' for the first time when her parents go out. It feels good, the word feels like it belongs to her.

 

She reads the book every day. The pages become frayed on the edges, and she can now mouth the words as she reads. She comes home from school one day to Papa sitting alone at the kitchen table. He slams the book in front of her, and tells her it's sinful, and has corrupted her. He places a lit match between her fingers, and doesn't let her go until she burns the book into ash. Nicole Haught was 15.

 

Nicole's parents start travelling often. Her papa sends neighbors over to check on her, and calls her every day. He reminds her to never engage in 'that dirty behavior', and she doesn't. She gets a call on the school phone once, and a classmate overhears. They whisper behind her back, and she finds the word 'dyke' sprayed onto  her gym locker. She changes in the bathroom now, and the girls no longer speak to her. The cigarettes grow more frequent, and her Western drawl grows raspy from the pack a day. Pretty soon, the smell of smoke sinks in to her hair like it did when she was six years old. She gets in a fight at school, and leaves with a little white scar next to her eye. Nicole Haught was 17.

 

Now she's off to college. Lesbian, the word she had fearfully whispered under her breath years before, rolls off her tongue. She has a girlfriend named Shae, and they go rock climbing together on weekends. She doesn't speak to her parents anymore, not since she stormed out after weeks of fighting when they tried to send her away to what they called 'church camp'. She's enrolled on a full scholarship for ecology, and she's on track to graduate this year. The winter air is crisp and biting, and she watches the Wednesday morning sunrise with Shae. Foolishly, Nicole finally began to believe that her past is behind her.

 

8:00 a.m. Her earliest class of the day. 20 students and a tired teaching assistant piled in to a lecture hall learn about geology. Shae and Nicole don't shy away from public affection, and Shae has her head resting in Nicole's lap.

 

8:17 a.m. Pop. Pop. Pop. The doors are kicked open, and hellfire rains down on the lecture hall. A man points a military rifle into the room, and bullets fly by in a twisted suburban kind of warfare. They run, everyone tries to run. Bodies begin to drop like flies, no less than five bloodied bullet holes in each. Blood, so much blood. The floors are slick with it, and Nicole begins to crawl through it. She drags Shae to an overturned desk in the far corner of the room, and they wait. Her professor charges at the shooter, and he gets pelted with bullets. But he buys Nicole enough time to run, and she carries Shae out of the room with her.

 

Sirens wail as the police arrive. Nicole finally takes a deep breath, and hugs Shae. Blood feels wet and sticky on her fingers, and she pulls back to find Shae's temple soaked in blood. Not noticing the gunshot wound in her chest, she strokes her girlfriend's hair as she rests dead in Nicole's lap.

 

They carry Nicole away in an ambulance. She's alone, the rest were driven away to the morgue. Nicole wishes she was there too, it would be easier. After a week of refusing to answer questions in the hospital, she leaves on her 23rd birthday. In a cheap motel in Purgatory, she tears open her arms with a razor she stole from the hospital. Why had she survived, why wasn't she the one left bleeding on the classroom floor that day? The blood runs down her arms, and her head grows light. She revisits her old friend from high school, and the nicotine brings back a rush of nostalgia. She doesn't notice the blood as red as her hair soaking into the bug-filled mattress, or how pale her wrists are getting.

 

Nicole Haught is 23.

* * *

 

Waverly Earp was 18. Senior prom was supposed to be the best night of her life. But saying no never worked for her, and sometimes not talking makes it feel better.

 

"Mama was sad" they told her, "Mama was angry". Waverly found her mother holding Daddy's pistol in the barn. She didn't know what was going on with the gun. It was loud and scary, and Daddy was the only one allowed to touch it. Mama told Waverly it was all her fault, and the gun went to Mama's head. No one else saw it happen, and the barn shook as the body fell. Waverly Earp was 6.

 

That night, she didn't just lose her mother. Willa ran off with her boyfriend, and Wynonna left without a word. It was her and Daddy alone, and all Daddy cared for was the alcohol. It sends him into a drunken rage, and he reaches for whatever he can find. She's lucky when it's just his fists, but it's almost always the belt. At the slightest of mistakes, he grabs her by the neck, and bends his over. The belt smacks into her back, and it stings less every time. 

 

She comes home from school with crayon drawings. She's in the second grade, and they told her to make a father's day card. She writes that her daddy loves his whiskey, and the school calls home. Ward Earp drags his daughter from the school, and gives her the worst beating she's ever felt. She cries for hours afterwards, and Ward tells his daughter she's too old to cry like that. Waverly Earp was 8.

 

Waverly learned to fight back. Not against her father, but against everything else. Champ Hardy and his friends tried to shove Chrissy Nedley into a portable toilet, and Waverly hit him in the crotch with a stick. Ever since then, she and Chrissy got along just fine. Waverly spends her afternoons at Chrissy's place, but Chrissy never seems to question why they never hang out at Waverly's. 

 

Soon after, she starts to realize something about herself. She and Chrissy are friends for two years before Waverly does anything about it. One night, during a sleepover, Waverly kisses Chrissy. It's her first kiss, and it feels right to her. The two girls begin a secret relationship, stealing kisses in private. Sure, Waverly had definitely liked Perry Crofte. But she definitely likes to kiss Chrissy Nedley. The two girls are kissing underneath the cheerleader's bleachers when Ward comes in looking for his daughter. He sees them kissing, and throws Waverly to the ground. That was the last time she saw Chrissy. Ward banned them from seeing each other, and no one disobeyed Ward Earp when he was angry. This time, he stuck nails through the belt, and the leather and iron left blood running down Waverly's back. Ward Earp said no kid of his was gonna turn out gay, and he'd beat it out of her even if it killed her. Waverly went to school the next day with a bruised face and a dozen new scars. Waverly Earp was 14.

 

With Chrissy out of her life, Champ Hardy tries to go after Waverly. Ward only encourages him, claiming his youngest daughter needs a man in her life. Waverly is tired and worn down, but she forces a happy exterior onto herself. She enters pagaents, and she's good at them. She becomes a cheerleader, and her grades are perfect. Champ is what everyone expects her to do, to date the star football player. So she does, and it may feel empty, but it's what everyone wants. And what Waverly Earp wants most right now is to be what people want. She puts up with his cheating and his pushy kisses for two years, never letting him in her pants. Not only does she not want him to see the bruises, but sex scares her, and she knows she doesn't want Champ Hardy to be her first.

 

Her prom night was a drunken haze. Champ drove her home in his pickup truck without her asking. But he drives past her rundown house, and goes to his. He tears off her dress, and she's too drunk to fight. All his talk about what he wants to do to her is frightening, but he must have slipped something in her drink, because she feels sleepy. The first time hurts like hell, and he's rough on her body. He doesn't stick around until she wakes up, and leaves her lying on the side of the road like a discarded tissue. She walks home dirty and half naked, with the expensive prom dress in tatters around her waist. She has new bruises from Champ, and blood runs down her bare legs.

 

Ward calls her a slut the minute she walks in the door. She sobs and explains, but he doesn't listen. He goes for a punch to the jaw first, and he's drunker than she's ever seen him. All the perfect report cards and trophies don't matter to him, she's just a punching bag for him. She begs him to stop, but Ward Earp doesn't listen to anyone. Her last words are an apology, and she falls unconscious from the pain. Waverly Earp was 18.

 

For nearly a year, Waverly stops speaking entirely.  As soon as she graduates from high school, Ward locks her up and makes her work. She doesn't mind the housework, anything's better than the rage. He screams at her for every mistake, for every smudge left on the tarnished spoons. She drops a plate one day, and it sets him off. He gets a bread knife and taunts her, tying his daughter to a kitchen chair. For ten days, she's tied to that chair. Hardly enough strength to breathe, Waverly silently prays that this is the end.

 

Waverly Earp is 19.

* * *

 

Ever since her sister was murdered, Gretta Perley gets all the hard jobs at the hospital. She's the only one who will take the hard cases, the ones about to die. Or in this case, the ones who should be dead. One after one, three stretchers are wheeled into Purgatory's tiny mental health room. Here, no one asks for help, and no one lives long enough to make it here. Except there's three in one day, and the files are pages long.

 

The first is an addict who drove into the lake. The second is the lone survivor of a mass shooting who was found after a suicide attempt. The third is the town sweetheart, beaten until she no longer speaks. Gretta is in for a challenge, and these three are gonna make it through, damnit!

 


	2. Won't Ever Love No Boy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! I haven't updated in over a month because I wasn't really sure where I was going with this one. I have an outline now, so I should be posting erratically, but frequently. Sorry for the short chapter, I'm using blocks of episodes for inspiration (Nicole is barely in these, and Waverly barely has charcter development at that point in the show). So this chapter is basically for waking up characters and introducing them to each other. Also! Tell me what you think of the "Wynonna naming her internal conflicts after revenants" thing- I'm not sure if it's too over the top. 
> 
> Chapter titles are from the album 'Clean' by Soccer Mommy (great band, totally recommend them live as well)
> 
> Trigger warnings: (at beginning of chapter by request)  
> -Depersonalization and self hatred  
> -Some abuse injury references  
> -Drug addiction  
> -Brief reference to PTSD  
> -Past abuse

At least they're all still alive. Some more than others, but breathing all the same. The two brunettes seem to be sisters, but by the look of it, they haven't seen each other in years. The ginger one isn't from around here, but her file comes with a warrant to question from some government agency called Black Badge, and whole paragraphs are blocked out with black marker.

 

The older sister's name is Wynonna. She's the only conscious one, and Gretta gives her a bucket to cough the lake water into. Wynonna's hair is matted with dirt, and she twitches from withdrawal symptoms. It's a good thing she ran out of drugs; if Wynonna had overdosed, she would have been too weak to resuccitate, even with Narcan. The younger sister, Waverly, is unconscious in the neighboring bed. She's unconscious, with an IV pumping nutrients into her body. She hadn't eaten in nearly two weeks, and starvation has taken a toll on her tiny frame. The third has wrists wrapped in bandages, with a wristband that reads 'Nicole Rayleigh Haught'. Her red hair is tangled, despite Gretta's best attempts to get the blood out of it.

 

The phone rings, and Gretta leans over her desk to answer it. Robocall. When she turns her back, sheets start to rustle. Wynonna sits up in bed, and the noise causes Waverly to toss and turn. Nicole's eyes flutter open, and Gretta knows she won't be getting much sleep for a while.

* * *

 

 

All she can hear is the ringing. Not the phone, but the thick buzzing in her head. The hospital sheets remind her of being a little kid, the last time she slept in sheets as white as these. Wynonna should be dead, hadn't she died in the lake? A wet paper is pressed against her stomach, one from the folder Xavier had given her. The rest are gone now, but this one must be important. Alice. It's too soon, she's not whole yet, not good enough for her daughter. 

 

In the next bed, a girl with honey-brown hair for days tosses and turns. Her skin has still-fading bruises, but she looks oddly familiar. Wynonna can't place quite where, the girl looks to kind to be anyone she's seen in years. Then she remembers the face from years ago, all grown up.

 

"Waverly?! You've... Grown out your... Hair" Wynonna stutters, trying not to wake the sleeping girl in the next bed. Her baby sister groggily opens her eyes, wincing in pain from a purple-and-black bruise filling her eye socket.

 

"Wynonna?" Waverly sounds like a sleepy chipmunk. She seems to be a little shocked, and Wynonna doesn't blame her. After all, Wynonna ran off without a word, and Ward wasn't exactly Father of the Year. "What are you doing here? Dad said you ran away to Greece-"

 

"Greece? More like the land of hair grease and drunks. Listen, baby girl, was he alright to you?" Wynonna doesn't need to wait for an answer. The bruises, the sonic cobwebs of Waverly's voice, unused for so long. Ward Earp's still the same old shit he always was. Poor Waves. She's been alone with a crazed, violent alcoholic since she was six. Who knows what she's seen.

 

Wynonna runs her hand along the sheets, reaching for Waverly's hand. Waverly tentatively grasps Wynonna's palm, and Wynonna can see the ropeburn marks twisting around her sister's wrists. The two sisters look into each other's eyes, neither quite knowing what happened to the other. 

 

She stays until Waverly falls asleep. The single window in the hospital shows the sun almost set, and Wynonna knows she has to face her fears. She's been stashing the pills shoved into her mouth under her tongue, scared that these pills will create another starving demon inside her. The dark makes her on edge, and shadows dance on the fringes of her vision. 

 

She's jokingly named these shadows, and the carvings that come with them, Jim. The shadow assassin, the flashes of fear Wynonna feels every night make her thirsty, wanting anything to alter this vulnerability. She's always told herself that nothing good comes at night, and Jim always comes at night. Better now than never, better to defeat him while the nurse is in her office filing a mountain of paperwork.

 

Come out, Jim. Show your face. His face is ugly, hollowed from  sucking out the light. He wants pills, alcohol, nicotine. He's not particularly picky. Wynonna read, in a book in Shorty's attic, that the first step in facing your problems is acknowledging that they exist. So she gave them a name, and a story. Now she just needs to write an ending to that story.

 

The nurse in charge has a sizable collection of crystals. They all have little typed labels, meticulously organized in rows. Wynonna grabs the first one; ammolite. The little iridescent stone is smooth in her hand, and cool to the touch. In her story, Jim is repelled by ammolite. Maybe it won't do anything to stop the physical affects of addiction, but the little world inside her head has an answer, albeit a strange one. The fairy tales she imagines might not help, but it feels good to think of the bad guy going away. She let's the ceiling light reflect off the stone, and little rainbows of light dance on the walls.

 

Now onto the next demon. Wynonna calls this one August. He came around when Alice did, hiding in every mirror. He's the fear of who she is, the fear that this body isn't hers, the fear of making a scorch mark upon the earth. August is deep-rooted anxiety, and he came to see her in waves when she drove into the lake. The next step is to face her reflection. 

 

Now that night is in full swing, Wynonna can see her reflection in the window. Window Wynonna is concerningly thin, and has bags under her eyes. She's scared, lonely, and can hardly remember who she was all those years ago, the last time she saw her sister. The mirror feels like a confession, and she repeats in her head, over and over, everyone she's hurt. Waverly, oh, Waverly. Please forgive me, Wynonna whispers.

 

Then she imagines Waverly's forgiveness. No pity, just forgiveness. And August fades away, leaving behind a glass panel and the reflection of a small, scared girl.

 

Maybe they're not gone. But the stories help a little, if only for now.

* * *

 

 

Nicole doesn't feel much. She's still coming down from the morphine drip the nurse took out at 7 a.m. sharp. The two strangers in her room seem to know each other, and Nicole feels like a bit of a third wheel. Her bandages are heavy, but the blood transfusions were successful , and she feels a sudden burst of energy. They've all been awake for about a day now, and the room doesn't seem all that new anymore. Nicole has yet to talk to anyone, but she knows the two girls are Wynonna and Waverly Earp. They must be sisters.

 

Waverly stumbles later that day, and spills water on her shirt. She turns her back to change shirts, and Nicole turns to the corner to give the girl some privacy. She hears yelping, and then turns to see Waverly stuck with her arms in her shirt, held folded above her head.

 

"Excuse me? I'm a little stuck!" Waverly's voice is soft and sweet,and Nicole chastises herself for being attracted to her roommate. Nicole helps Waverly twist out of her shirt, and the two lock eyes, an odd tension clearly present.  Nicole clears her throat, uncomfortable with this much eye contact.

 

"Nice to meet you, I'm Nicole. Nicole Haught"... Not as smooth as Nicole intended, but a particularly large  bruise on Waverly's ribs caught her eye, and now she's worried. To add to her anxiety, the local hunting club is out today, and Nicole jumps at every gunshot. Waverly smiles back at her, and Nicole hopes they'll be friends, if nothing more.

 

The next couple days are filled with doctors and lawyers for all three. Nicole hardly sees Waverly, barely catching a glimpse of the girl before she is called in to testify to yet another attorney. 

 

A few days later, Waverly gets news that her former boss, Shorty, has died of a heart attack. The girls eat a sit-down dinner that night, and Nicole reaches for Waverly's hand, hoping to comfort the grieving girl. Maybe Nicole is too worked up about it, but Waverly seems so gentle, and her heart beats a little off tempo in times like this. It doesn't last long, and she soon remembers it's all just a crush.

* * *

 

 

Wynonna's back, and the girl in the third bunk seems so... Normal. Waverly didn't think she'd get away from her father like this, but anything's better than the pain. Her voice is slowly coming back, and she's starting to regain movement in her wrists. But the nightmares are still loud and clear. Sometimes Champ, sometimes her father. Sometimes she's still prom queen, head cheerleader, and valedictorian. These feel empty, always with her not-so-perfect outside life looking.

 

Maybe Wynonna had it better. Waverly has no idea where her sister's been all these years. She takes extra pills, and carries a soaking wet, folded sheet of paper everywhere she goes. Wynonna flinches at the opening of doors, and the brush of bedsheets against skin. Maybe she's not ok.

 

Does Waverly know what ok feels like?

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING  
> -drug addiction  
> -teen pregnancy  
> -alcoholism  
> -prostitution  
> -gun violence  
> -homophobia  
> -self harm  
> -suicide  
> -child abuse  
> -domestic violence  
> -rape
> 
>  
> 
> Please stay safe, don't read this if it will hurt you


End file.
